Sustaining the material basis of society is becoming increasingly complex as demand grows for ever more sophisticated materials. As concerns regarding material availability arise, many studies following material stocks and flows and defining material criticality are being conducted. These assessments provide information that can be decisive for the industrial deployment of sustainable and innovative technologies. Disruption risks to the supply chains must be predicted to prevent material shortages at the corporate, national and global scale. Designers can play a major role for the preservation of material resources by considering the evolution of material availability at the material selection stage. Bearing in mind the lifecycle of any product, material recyclability will progressively become a key factor for the design process. This paper is part of an on-going research being conducted at the G-SCOP lab of the Grenoble Institute of Technology, whose aim is to provide dynamic resource scenarios and additional input to Design for Recycling guidelines, so as to assist material selection in the design process. It presents a framework to identify the parameters that determine the evolution of recycling chains, based on material flow data and historical accounts of the shifts, ascent and decline of recycling activities. This should allow designers to incorporate material criticality and recyclability to their lifecycle assessments.